February 01, 2005

Distributed Journalism in Action

by Richard Koman

If you want to see why blogs really are the future of journalism, head on over to The Daily Kos, where you can see distributed journalism in action. The story in question is who is "Jeff Gannon" and what is the "Talon News Agency." It was Gannon, you see, who was the sole reporter with access to the memo exposing Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

Enter bloggers. Daily KOS is contributors are fanning out across net researching who Jeff Gannon and Talon are, why they were leaked the document, and what connections they have with other conservative information bureaus. Here's a look at how the work is being spread around:

• Tomatoobserver is researching Time of Grace Ministries
• Mnemosyne is checking and running phone numbers
• conntexdem is researching Bruce Eberle
• baltimoretim is researching precisely what the process is for obtaining a White House press credential
• fauxreal and ladydawg are researching morning gaggles here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/215946/913
• sean mykael is looking into Free Speech Foundation. Myrkury has graciously stepped in to advise on legalities of non-profit status (thank God). We may need people in a couple different states to physically pull paperwork soon. (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/14024/9923)
• mlk and Marisa are constructing a sort of visual database "family tree" of relations, groups and individuals. This is a big project and someone might want to volunteer on that diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/152558/079. Additionally, Marisa is asking for data entry help.
• spiderleaf is creating a timeline about the CIA memo leak/Novak/who knew what when, references to it in press, and analysis (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/122222/689)
• NYBri is preparing to start the FOIA request process and could use some volunteers (diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/153513/309)
• Louise volunteers to match timeline of Gannon at press briefings with his written "scoops"
• Radically Bitter is compiling very, very useful DNS data
• KansasNate is making sure important stuff is getting fed into dkospedia
• Nonemptysubsets (gotta love that handle) is downloading web sites since they're disappearing so fast. Requests taken.
• Sidinny will set up a diary called "Altered Realities" that will keep track of what's been changed on the visited sites, what's been scrubbed and what it all means. However, he's on kidwatch and can't do much more than set the diary up, so needs help with volunteers who will do the analysis.
• London Yank is looking into any connection with NORTHCOM/Psyops

There's also this intriguing statement from the project editor: "Jeff Gannon IS a pseudonym. I'm absolutely certain of this and when we're done with this whole thing I'll explain how and why I'm certain. For now, please just take my word for it."

These folks may or may not turn anything up, but it's a fascinating display of what distributed journalism looks like, and is quite possibly scratching the tip of a rather fishy iceberg.

---

Reach Richard Koman at rkoman (at) gmail (dot) com. Personal blog: richardkoman.typepad.com

01:20 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

January 20, 2005

Scoop! Google is about to unveil a completely revamped Adwords/Adsense program to counter inroads from competitors such as Kanoodle

by Tom Foremski and Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

As this is being writtten, about 1800 Google marketing people from its offices around the world are at an internal sales conference at a secret location in San Francisco, being briefed on a completely revamped Google Adwords/Adsense program and other new features.

Adwords and Adsense are what make Google such an incredible cash machine. The Adwords and Adsense programs deliver paid text ad links. Adwords delivers paid text ads to users of its search services and the ads are matched to the search term.

Adsense delivers text ads to readers of a web page and they are matched to the content of a page. Virtually anybody with a web page can become a member of the Adsense network and host Google ads and receive a cut of the ad revenue.

The text ads business is crucial to maintaining Google’s pace of growth and its share price, which reflects high expectations for the dominant search giant. But Google offers few tools to advertisers to let them control where their ads appear and on which web sites. Similarly, web site publishers have virtually no control over what types of ads Google sends their way. This has caused some shifting to competitors such as Kanoodle that offer such controls.

That's why the revamped Adwords/Adsense will provide a suite of tools that provide greater control, management and monitoring data to advertisers, to better target their sales messages.

It’s interesting to note that executives from Kanoodle hit town earlier this week, right when the secret Google internal unveiling is taking place. I haven’t had a chance to ask them about whether they timed it because they knew about the Adwords relaunch or if it was a coincidence.

There are 18 coaches standing by to whisk the visiting Googlers off to Tahoe this weekend. If you are in Tahoe this weekend, look out for them on the slopes and in the bars, especially the bars. If you pick up any juicy tidbits, ping me!

02:37 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

January 06, 2005

Silicon Valley Watcher named as one of most influential blogs by Bacon’s -- the media watcher bible

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
(Our good buddy Tom Abate at the SF Chronicle brought this one to our attention.)

This is fantastic news because Bacon’s is the gold standard in the media industry.

Check out the third paragraph in this story from Media Post’s Media Daily News (I added the bold type):

Bacon's To Track Blogs
By Gavin O’Malley
Monday, December 27, 2004

Bacon's Information, the provider of media research, distribution, monitoring, and evaluation services for public relations and corporate communications professionals, has endeavored to light the depths of the Blogosphere. In January, Bacon's MediaSource will begin sharing with its clients the names of what it considers to be the 250 most reputable blogs, the messages they contain, and the frequency with which client-relevant information appears on them.

Ruth McFarland, senior vice president and publisher for Bacon's, said she vacillated about the significance of blogs, but was sufficiently convinced this year to assign three of her 56 editors to monitor the Blogosphere. "We're adjusting our network because no one is accurately monitoring these guys as their influence continues to grow."

Bacon's is keeping tight raps on its blog list, which covers technology, politics, business, travel, and religion. The racy Wonkette, the Miami Herald's Dave Barry, and the Silicon Valley Watcher are three well-known blogs run by "reputable, credible professionals" that McFarland said will be on the list.

Full story is here.

02:49 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

January 05, 2005

How to thrive in 2005, part 2

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyMediaWatch.com

In response to my column yesterday, How to thrive in 2005, my partner Tom Foremski comments:

I'm very optimisitic that professional journalistic practices will now become more widely known and practiced because of blogging and bloggers. And I predict that the term blogging will lose much meaning. In the same way that the "new economy" turned out to be the "economy," blogging is journalism and it is subject to the same rules that define the quality of journalism. But there will be much confusion in the meantime ;-)

Can't disagree with that, but . . .

I like the term "citizen journalists" and agree that this term, as well as "blogger" is likely to fade. "Journalist" will continue to serve, adding another layer of meaning as this new publishing medium - the so-called "blogosphere" (ugly word) - becomes familiar terrain.

Whatever you call them, the challenge for these people, as they come online to tell their stories and share their opinions, will be to adopt best journalistic practices, honestly and with integrity, and not imitate the mainstream journalists, in the business and general reader press, who have degraded the profession by passing along government and business propaganda without questioning, investigating, and putting it in context.

It will be very interesting to watch major publishing and broadcast organizations continue to respond and adapt to the blog movement. These organizations have already become, in my opinion, so involved in the strategies of their corporate owners that it is often difficult to find honest reporting in their products.

Adopting the trappings of the feisty, independent blogosphere may help mainstream publishers and broadcasters win back some of the trust they've lost in recent years, initially at least, but I fear that these organizations will use the blog format as just another vehicle to continue disseminating the products of their compromised journalistic approach.

The field seems open for honest journalists - whether they come from traditional settings or from the ranks of bloggers - to use the Web to report stories that the mainstream press (technology, business, or general reader) ignores, and to correct the misconceptions and deceptions of the mainstream press.

Nowhere will this have more impact than in Silicon Valley.

We've already seen the effect of bloggers making an end run around corporate PR organizations to report news of new products and technologies, personnel moves, mergers and acquisitions, criminal investigations and other legal actions. This activity will continue to increase.

Companies (and their public relations contractors) must assume that, sooner rather than later, everybody in Silicon Valley (I refer to both the strict geographic and less literal meanings of that appellation) is going to know, more or less, everything about what they are doing.

What was once whispered (if it didn't make it into print, and if it was really interesting it usually did) around Silicon Valley water coolers is now published - by bloggers, then picked up by the technology business and general reader press if the story warrants such coverage.

What does that kind of exposure do to a corporate communications program?

Politicians and government policy makers have discovered that, over time, cover-ups and deception and efforts to mislead the public generally don't work.

Can Silicon Valley executives maintain control through more robust enforcement of confidentiality agreements and employment contracts? Among a worker population increasingly made up of part-timers, independent contractors, and outsourced employees thousands of miles away from corporate HQ? Can they keep a lid on news, bad and good, at least for the next few weeks, quarters, over the life of a multi-year CEO contract?

I don't think so.

The trick will be to adopt communications strategies that take for granted full disclosure of bad news as well as good, and that finds in the emerging network of "citizen journalists" an opportunity to build trust and thus win respect and loyalty from customers and other business partners.

08:17 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

Old media buying new-ish media, will it make a difference?

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Last month Dow Jones bought CBS Marketwatch for about $520m and the Washington Post bought Slate, the Microsoft founded online magazine for an undeclared sum.

The question I have is: Why would two companies that have not made much/any money with online publishing make a success out of buying two online media companies that have not made much/any money publishing online?

One plus one never makes two in such cases, it usually just makes one. If you don’t know how to make money in online publishing, buying another company that hasn’t figured it out either, doesn’t improve your chances of profits. It just means you can lose more money at it than before.

On the Dow Jones/Marketwatch deal: What will be the branding? Will the new Marketwatch be WSJ-lite? Already, there is a wide cultural divide between Wall Street Journal editors and reporters, and Dow Jones wire editors and reporters. You’ll notice that there are few former Dow Jones wire editors/reporters at the WSJ and vice-versa. The pecking order for the Marketwatch staff is perfectly clear. Not a good prospect for staff retention, I would think.

Also, if people leave Marketwatch, how do you recruit reporters to a media publication so low on the Dow Jones internal cultural totem pole, especially with few career prospects to move up/across? Yes, online advertising is going through the roof right now, and that might paper-over a few problematic issues initially. It’s the longer term outlook for the Marketwatch business group that isn’t clear. Getting a decent return on that half-a-billion-plus investment is going to be tough.

Regarding Washington Post buying Slate? Compatible editorial, certainly. But, again, there is a two-tier structure in the making. AP reported that the Washington Post is looking for content for its online site.

Did you know that on the whole, print journalists look down on online hacks? And they will go to great lengths to avoid writing for their paper’s online site if the copy doesn’t also go into the newspaper? Newsprint staff consider themselves a notch or three above online/wire hacks. That is why many newspaper sites use separate staff for print and online.

At the Financial Times, we were the first to have an integrated news and feature desks where the page editors and copy editors for both print and online sat nearby each other. Even so, it took a while to overcome the internal cultural resistance to online news writing by the newspaper hacks.

Publishers of print newspapers and magazines have yet to show ANY prowess in the online media sector. And if they try, they will retreat in a hurry, because they cannot afford to expose their print business model to online.

Print advertising doesn’t have the type of metrics that online advertising possesses. You can't pin an ROI on print advertising the same way you can do it for online. If you offer advertisers a package of print and online advertising, you will gradually lose your print advertisers--unless they are large consumer brands. Why? Because the online advertising clickthroughs will be disappointing (and expensive.) Which means companies will conclude that their print advertising is not reaching their target group--and they will pull all of their ads, print and online.

That's why many print newspaper and magazine publishers risk the continued loss of print advertising if they expose their business models to online advertising. They are trapped within a crumbling business model, IMHO.

07:27 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

January 04, 2005

How to thrive in 2005

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyMediaWatch.com

I was going to write a column about trends to expect in 2005, then decided not to bother. If you haven't already read at least one column predicting what's hot in 2005, chances are you're not looking to read one.

Without sounding too world-weary I hope, may I gently suggest that in 2005 we're all going to struggle with the same set of challenges this year that we've faced every January: threats to survival (think tsunami if you live in view of the ocean, terrorist strikes and war no matter where you live, and a range of horrors that can happen anywhere) and everything else.

Closer to our Silicon Valley home, by now we all know that blogs are the next big thing, online shopping and advertising are booming, traditional media are under pressure, and competition in technology business is fiercer than ever. These trends, with facts and figures to support them, have dominated technology business news so far this week and the weeks since before I went on holiday...and have done so for years.

I just re-read an article I wrote in 1999, "The Journalist of the Future," and was pleasantly surprised to see how, despite a headline that just begged to be ridiculed as soon as it was published, I managed to get a few things right.

Online shopping and advertising were booming back then - according virtually every technology business publication, as judged within the context of then-current expectations. Since that time, a small pie has gotten a lot larger.

I also asked, "In a Matt Drudge world where anybody can publish a Web page and disseminate information by e-mail, where journalists join lawyers and politicians as the professionals least trusted by the public, do we even need professional journalists anymore?"

In the world of overheated blogger expectations, that question has been answered with a resounding Yes.

Professional journalists are beginning to see the light, too, with an avant-garde boldly coming out in favor of blogs...as long as bloggers follow professional journalistic practices and ethics.

A kind of "damn the contradictions, full speed ahead" approach, if you stop to think about it.

Battle-hardened and cynical as I was back in '99, even I didn't expect that professional journalists could fall any lower in public opinion. Media coverage of the recent U.S. Presidential campaign, election, and vote count aftermath disabused me of that notion.

But, I did forsee the current discussion regarding the blogosphere's encroachment on mainstream media turf:

To the extent that non-professional Internet publishers fail to gain this trust, by proving themselves reliable over time, they will remain marginalized, mere bits and bubbles in the Internet's digital flood. They will pose no threat to professional journalists.

To the extent that non-professionals acquire the skills and follow the processes that distinguish reliable, professional journalists and publications, the non-professionals will tend to become in many ways indistinguishable from professional journalists. The emergence of trusted Web-based publications created by people without formal training as journalists but who have acquired solid journalistic tools and skills illustrates this convergence.

One can't miss observation is that in 2005 corporations, governments, other institutions, and individuals will find ways to use the Web as they use the rest of the media: to transmit propaganda to their target audiences, earn profits, and otherwise implement their agendas.

Still up in the air: will the new wave of "citizen journalists" now flogging their blogs avoid the pitfalls that eroded trust in their professional predecessors?

Clue: the biggest pitfall is unquestioning acceptance of propaganda from leaders and authorities (including company executives and even alpha bloggers) and the subsequent repetition of said propaganda without sufficient research and reporting to put it in proper perspective or to correct any mistakes or untruths it might contain.

That's what put professional journalists in a position to be ridiculed and scorned by bloggers.

That's what threatens to put bloggers (or "citizen journalists" or whatever you want to call them) in the same position today, if they continue to pass along unsubstantiated rumors, misinformation, and paid marketing pitches without disclosing them as such.

The alternative? We can use our newfound power to truthfully tell the stories we want to tell, whether they be about politics, or the arts, or about how to survive the vicissitudes of moving forward one day at a time in Silicon Valley dealing with the tools, personalities, and organizations that set the boundaries for our professional lives. If we have to transmit propaganda - face it, that's what most of us do in our day jobs, whether we write anything online or not - we can be honest and call it what it is.

I was pleased to see the progress we've made in living out some of the promise I wrote about in 1999.

Here's hoping I'll feel the same a year from now when I look back at this column.

Links:

The Journalist of the Future by Doug Millison, 19 August 1999

What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"

02:16 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

December 26, 2004

Trapped inside a crumbling business model? Exposing print advertisers to online can be disastrous

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

I recently had a chat with a buddy of mine who publishes one of the best business magazines around, and it’s been doing reasonably well despite the continuing downturn in advertising.

He told me that his publication might close down its web site. Why, I asked? We lose money from advertisers pulling their ads from the magazine, he said. When their online ads get very few clicks, they then decide that the print advertising is also not getting through to the right people. So they pull all their print and online ads.

About $1,000 in poorly performing online advertising can result in pulling out $20,000 of print advertising.

That’s why you will see more and more print publishers doing less and less online—they can’t afford to expose themselves to the online advertising model. That’s why many print publishers are trapped inside a crumbling business model. Print advertising won’t go away, but it won’t stay the same. Big changes are ahead and we will cover them here.

dk0933

---

-advert-

30% Off Designer Opal Jewelry for SVW Readers!

10:05 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

Yahoo Search Blog: Blogs as a Feedback Tool

by Candida Kutz for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Tom and I met with the founders of Voce Communications last Friday, 10 Dec., for an informal lunch meet and greet (see Tom's companion piece). Among the guests were Nancy Evars and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, who worked together to put up the Yahoo Search Blog.

This pairing in itself was interesting to me, as engineers (Jeremy) and marketing types (Nancy) have traditionally been allergic to one another. (I've seen this many times from my former vantage point inside many startups.) So I found it fascinating they have managed to work together to create a succesful blog.

Nancy said the Yahoo Search blog was created as a means of creating a 2-way dialogue with customers regarding internet search.

She stressed that it was not set up to be a PR tool, but as a resource that "influencers" (influential bloggers) would read and contribute to, thus providing valuable feedback to Yahoo from those who matter most. (Which brings up the point that metrics such as hits and unique visitors are not in themselves useful -- it's WHO is hitting on you.)

I asked her whether the blog could become a way of replacing traditional marketing and research. She replied that no, they would not take the place the place of focus groups and other traditional means of doing market research, but instead the blog is viewed as a tool for enhancing marketing efforts. Other Yahoo departments considering new product launches are now consulting with her on how to use blogs to beta test and launch upcoming products.

This is one of the greatest strength of blogs: they provide companies a relatively low cost means of conducting market research and obtaining user information from those who are actually using the technology in question. All companies need to create a genuine dialogue between themselves and their customers, and blogs provide an elegant low cost solution to the age old problem of figuring out what the customer wants.

Links:

Voce Communications

Yahoo Search Blog

cd1007

09:54 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

December 15, 2004

Oracle + Peoplesoft = ?

Larry Ellison got his way - and what self-respecting billionaire doesn't? - but what are the prospects for Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft? Not good, says Silicon Valley's leading newspaper.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Benjamin Pimental telegraphs the sad news in the first sentence of his article on the front page of today's business section: "What do you get when you combine a company run by an Armani-clad executive known for take-no-prisoners tactics with a firm led by a fatherly founder who hands out bagels and lets his workers wear flannel to work?"

Merging employees from the two incompatible cultures is considered the prime challenge:

"They are two different cultures," said Richard Stiller, a Cupertino human resources consultant who has been involved in more than 20 mergers.

Referring to Oracle, he said, "They're the barbarians. It's take no prisoners. A guy like Ellison never lets them relax."

On the other hand, he said, PeopleSoft is much like the old Hewlett- Packard Co., whose founders popularized the famed HP Way, which put heavy emphasis on the welfare of employees.

Kinikin said, "I think a lot of those people who wanted to manage by walking around and having bagels every Friday are probably going to leave -- because that's not the Oracle way. The Oracle way is about survival of the fittest."

Economic forces may keep together a workforce that culture might otherwise separate, however. Given the current tight Silicon Valley job market, chances are good that PeopleSoft employees will learn to grin and bear it, assuming that they don't get the ax in the inevitable post-merger layoffs.

by Doug Millison for Silicon Valley Media Watch

Links:

When firms merge, a clash of cultures: Oracle, PeopleSoft managing styles couldn't be more different, by Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 December 2004

What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"

cd1930

08:16 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

December 13, 2004

Trend-spotting: citizen advertisers

Citizen journalists, meet your logical corollaries: citizen advertisers.

Apple iPod photo: Homemade ad object

If you don't want to blog the news, you can blog the ads:

School teacher George Masters has the marketing world abuzz with a homemade ad for Apple Computer's iPod that is rapidly "going viral." To some experts, Masters' ad heralds the future of advertising. Homemade ads will play a big part in marketing, just like blogging is shaking up the news. Masters' 60-second animated ad features flying iPods, pulsing hearts and swirling '70s psychedelia. It's set to the beat of "Tiny Machine" by '80s pop band the Darling Buds.

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
cd1011

Links:

Home-Brew IPod Ad Opens Eyes by Leander Kahney, Wired News, 13 December 2004 (page includes link to Masters' ad)

What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"

09:34 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

Priming the pump… some thoughts on Dan Gillmor leaving the San Jose Merc

In an exclusive interview with OhmyNews founders, Dan Gillmor says he is starting a venture to publish an online citizens' newspaper along the lines of the South Korean citizens newspaper OhmyNews.

And it seems that Dan might be leaving the tech beat too. In the interview, he hasn't said much about tech, or continuing to cover tech.

Dan Gillmor: Leaving the San Jose Mercury News

I'm not sure if that's a good idea. If I can remember the do's and don'ts of Personal Brand Building for Journalists 101, you use your employers brand to build a personal brand associated with a specific expertise / viewpoint / industry. Then you have a better chance of monetizing it later.

I would advise Dan not to give up coverage of the tech beat unless he has exemplary skills as an editor because a citizens newspaper means working with thousands of very enthusiastic amateur journalists. And that means lots, and lots of editing, coaching, and teaching. There is no such thing as "free" content.

Also, why is Dan playing with us? Consider the following:

December 9, 3.59 pm: Dan's decision to launch an online venture is announced first by fellow Merc Silicon Beat bloggers. (This is classic two-bites at the cherry launch strategy: give a pre-brief and exclusive to one publication in advance of the launch.)

December 9 at 7.41pm: Dan announces his departure on his own blog and says the following:

"My colleagues Matt Marshall and Mike Bazeley beat me (and everyone else) to the punch on posting about my departure -- here's their own blog entry. Seems in keeping with the blog world that they got it first."

My good buddy Om Malik on GigaOm points out that Mr. Gillmor is not the first top-tier journalist to leave his job for the blogging world. Some chap called Tom Foremski apparently did it first.

What's next for Dan Gillmor? The OhmyNews interview.

More priming of the pump by Dan at pjnet.org:
July 25, 2004 Gillmor: An OhMyNews Could Have USA Success

June 25, 2004: Media Guerilla (aka Mike Manuel) from Voce Communications runs the results of an informal poll asking which leading tech journalists would leave for the blogging world first:

"Dan received about 60% of the votes, followed by brother Steve Gillmor at eWeek with 22%. Surprisingly, Tom Foremski (despite recent speculation) only garnered 11% of the votes. Neither Jon Udell at InfoWorld or Hiawatha Bray at the Boston Globe received any votes."

cd1958

08:02 AM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

December 12, 2004

Help find a missing friend - Daniel Clune

It's not often one has to request this kind of help ...

Soon after Meetup.com launched, members of Bookcrossing.com, a fledgling web community where book lovers "set books free," started having Meetups in their towns to trade books and chat. And since, a wonderful community has flourished on --and off-- line. (Over 4,500 Bookcrossing Meetups to date!)

It was a real shocker to learn a few weeks ago that Daniel Clune, the head programmer at Bookcrossing.com, disappeared on November 6th in Sandpoint, Idaho.

Daniel Clune: Missing since November 6, 2004.

Please consider this plea from a Bookcrosser:

"His family is devastated and the community dumbfounded. A young, healthy man, Daniel, 29, is known for his reliability... a stand up guy. Not the sort to take off on a flight of fancy. No one believes that his disappearance is voluntary. Something happened to Daniel Clune, and his family and friends need to know just what that something is. Please consider featuring the story of Daniel's disappearance. The key to finding him is out there somewhere, but has not yet been found. Exposure is badly needed."

Some links:

http://finddanny.com/
http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/5/1441038/22/subj_PLEASE-HELP
http://bookcrossing.meetup.com/

Maybe you can help spread the word?

Thank you.

-Myles (and the Meetup team)
myles weissleder
vp, communications
http://www.meetup.com
415-332-3205
http://press.meetup.com

cd1930

08:41 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

December 08, 2004

The story so far

Pardon me for tooting our own horn here, but after a few short weeks of publication, Silicon Valley Watcher is a hit - and we'd like to invite you to help us in the effort to make it the location on the Web for insight into the world's leading site for technology business innovation. After all, nobody knows Silicon Valley the way you do.

Hundreds of people - interesting, involved, busy, like you in other words - now visit Silicon Valley Watcher every day (and the number is increasing) and we'd like to give you all more of what you're learning to enjoy here.

We know that you know about business deals in the works, new projects, personnel moves, new products and services in the pipeline, research breakthroughs, future trends. If you have a success story to share, please do - and if you've got a cautionary tale, that's valuable, too.

We'll keep it confidential and anonymous if that's necessary.

If you'd like to make your editorial contribution public, that's fine, too. We'll give you a byline or otherwise give you credit for what you pass along.

Maybe you've got information or subject-matter expertise that you'd like to share, but you don't consider yourself a writer. We'll assign a writer or editor to work with you to create an article, column, interview, or case study.

Adding comments to specific articles is a good way to participate, too. These articles are offered as a springboard for further discussion. We're developing ways to spotlight comments and discussions as they develop, too.

It's a citizen journalist world all of a sudden here on the Web, so let's join forces, tell our stories and share insight and information that we can all use to make our Silicon Valley days more profitable . . . and more enjoyable.

Please don't hesitate to contact me by email if you've got an idea for an article or a suggestion to make Silicon Valley Watcher better.

Thanks,
Doug Millison
Managing Editor, Silicon Valley Watcher
doug at siliconvalleywatcher dot com

03:00 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories

November 23, 2004

Welcome to Silicon Valley Media Watch

Ten years ago this month, at the Comdex show in Las Vegas (remember Comdex?), I introduced a new magazine, Blaster. Launching Silicon Valley Media Watch a decade later is a fitting memorial to that project.

In 1994, personal computers were going "multimedia" - gaining the ability to present and manipulate photographs and other high-resolution still images, sound and music, digital video.

"Interactivity" was another buzz word that was becoming reality. A dedicated band of programmers and designers had emerged from the disparate domains of videogames, consumer electronics, computer software development, television and radio broadcasting, and cinema. They created and published a broad spectrum of entertainment and educational experiences, publications in every genre, art - vast software landscapes that people could wander through, more or less purposefully, enlivened by multimedia, distributed on CD-ROM. I created and edited a magazine that helped to pull this community together, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier.

In 1994, Compuserve and upstart America Online were the go-to online destinations. The Internet still carried a whiff of rocket science. The Web was just emerging as a viable publishing platform.

All kinds of projects were beginning to seem possible. Books that extended their contents with interactive multimedia CD-ROMs. CD-ROMs that included a built-in browser to connect to a web site and update the contents. And, the Holy Grail: the "information superhighway" where all publishers (newspaper, magazine, book) and broadcasters (TV and radio) and software developers would sell or otherwise distribute their wares to consumers around the world.

The funny thing is, despite the dot-com and larger technology business nose-dive, we're still on track to realize this dream - steadily building, bit by bit, what my old friend Michael Moon calls the "mediasphere."

And, as in 1994, Silicon Valley remains the motor, the bank, the brain at the center of it all. Thus the need for Silicon Valley Media Watch.

As they were then, Silicon Valley's geographical boundaries remain fluid. We'll focus primarily on media coverage of people, companies, tools, and technologies in the the greater San Francisco Bay Area…and we'll trace causes and effects, impacts and influences farther afield as necessary and appropriate.

The way the media depict Silicon Valley has a direct effect on Silicon Valley - influencing customer behavior, market opportunities, and even stock valuations. To see this demonstrated in real-time, watch Apple's share price this week, rising in part because of positive media coverage of the iPod phenomenon.

As Silicon Valley Media Watch ramps up and expands offerings, we'll need help from readers, too. You know better than any journalist, even more, in some important ways, than any industry pundit. Your tips, links, inside information will be reflected in what you read here. We'll respect anonymity if that's what you want

Back to Blaster magazine. It was predicated on the notion that young people would use multimedia-capable computers and a new generation of low-cost software and hardware tools for their own creations - combining text, graphics, photos, and music - that they would share online and via high-capacity disks. We focused on young people - "screenagers" we called them, who had grown up using videogame controllers and computer mice - because we knew they would discover the best way to use the tools and platforms that were just beginning to take shape in the early 1990s.

The blog phenomenon and DVDs are making the Blaster vision a reality for millions of people around the world.

It's worth nothing that the software I'm using for this column, Moveable Type, one of the popular tools at the center of the "blogosphere," was created in Menlo Park, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Thanks for joining us for this ride.

Doug Millison
Editor, Silicon Valley Media Watch
doug@siliconvalleywatcher.com

Links:

In Remembrance Sam Whitmore remembers Comdex, via the ever-interesting The Fullrunner newsletter.

12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories | Top Stories

Welcome to Silicon Valley Media Watch

Ten years ago this month, at the Comdex show in Las Vegas (remember Comdex?), I introduced a new magazine, Blaster. Launching Silicon Valley Media Watch a decade later is a fitting memorial to that project.

In 1994, personal computers were going "multimedia" - gaining the ability to present and manipulate photographs and other high-resolution still images, sound and music, digital video.

"Interactivity" was another buzz word that was becoming reality. A dedicated band of programmers and designers had emerged from the disparate domains of videogames, consumer electronics, computer software development, television and radio broadcasting, and cinema. They created and published a broad spectrum of entertainment and educational experiences, publications in every genre, art - vast software landscapes that people could wander through, more or less purposefully, enlivened by multimedia, distributed on CD-ROM. I created and edited a magazine that helped to pull this community together, Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier.

In 1994, Compuserve and upstart America Online were the go-to online destinations. The Internet still carried a whiff of rocket science. The Web was just emerging as a viable publishing platform.

All kinds of projects were beginning to seem possible. Books that extended their contents with interactive multimedia CD-ROMs. CD-ROMs that included a built-in browser to connect to a web site and update the contents. And, the Holy Grail: the "information superhighway" where all publishers (newspaper, magazine, book) and broadcasters (TV and radio) and software developers would sell or otherwise distribute their wares to consumers around the world.

The funny thing is, despite the dot-com and larger technology business nose-dive, we're still on track to realize this dream - steadily building, bit by bit, what my old friend Michael Moon calls the "mediasphere."

And, as in 1994, Silicon Valley remains the motor, the bank, the brain at the center of it all. Thus the need for Silicon Valley Media Watch.

As they were then, Silicon Valley's geographical boundaries remain fluid. We'll focus primarily on media coverage of people, companies, tools, and technologies in the the greater San Francisco Bay Area…and we'll trace causes and effects, impacts and influences farther afield as necessary and appropriate.

The way the media depict Silicon Valley has a direct effect on Silicon Valley - influencing customer behavior, market opportunities, and even stock valuations. To see this demonstrated in real-time, watch Apple's share price this week, rising in part because of positive media coverage of the iPod phenomenon.

As Silicon Valley Media Watch ramps up and expands offerings, we'll need help from readers, too. You know better than any journalist, even more, in some important ways, than any industry pundit. Your tips, links, inside information will be reflected in what you read here. We'll respect anonymity if that's what you want

Back to Blaster magazine. It was predicated on the notion that young people would use multimedia-capable computers and a new generation of low-cost software and hardware tools for their own creations - combining text, graphics, photos, and music - that they would share online and via high-capacity disks. We focused on young people - "screenagers" we called them, who had grown up using videogame controllers and computer mice - because we knew they would discover the best way to use the tools and platforms that were just beginning to take shape in the early 1990s.

The blog phenomenon and DVDs are making the Blaster vision a reality for millions of people around the world.

It's worth nothing that the software I'm using for this column, Moveable Type, one of the popular tools at the center of the "blogosphere," was created in Menlo Park, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Thanks for joining us for this ride.

Doug Millison
Editor, Silicon Valley Media Watch
doug@siliconvalleywatcher.com

Links:

In Remembrance Sam Whitmore remembers Comdex, via the ever-interesting The Fullrunner newsletter.

12:51 PM | Comments (0) | Posted to Top Stories | Top Stories